Chionodoxa help

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:52:37 PDT
Hi,

I've looked up in my copy of The Smaller Bulbs by Brian Mathew and here are 
the descriptions I find:
C. luciliae (C. gigantea) "usually only one or two large upright flowers 
about 3-4 cm. in diameter, in a soft lavender-blue with a small white 
centre....There is a white form in cultivation. " He goes on to say that 
'C. luciliae of gardens' that is offered in catalogs and the commonest 
species in cultivation will have to take the name C. siehei or C. forbesii. 
He describes the former as the vigorous version of the plant that has been 
wrongly grown as C. luciliae. Apparently at the time he wrote the book 
someone else thought  C. forbesii was the same species, but at that point 
he wasn't convinced. The book was written in 1987 so But C. siehei is 
described as having 12 flowers in a one-sided raceme, each about 2 to 2.5 
cm in diameter and a strong blue with a large white eye.  (more purple if 
compared to C. sardensis).  C. is described as having the richest blue with 
four and twelve slightly pendent flowers abut 2 to 2.5 cm. in diameter with 
almost no white eye in the centre, apart from the filaments.

So probably Arnold's picture he added to the wiki is not correct, but I 
need some of you who are more expert than I am to help me figure out what 
to change it to. I thought it looked like Kelly's picture of C. sardensis 
which was what Jerry suggested it might be even though he didn't. Anybody 
grow these and have pictures of some of the species to add to the wiki?

Confusing all of this is that Speta thought this genus should be moved to 
Scilla even though he moved most of Scilla into new genera. So Kew has 
these species:
Scilla luciliae , Scilla sardensis , 
<http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/namedetail.do/…>Scilla 
forbesii<http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/namedetail.do/…> 
. It lists Scilla siehei as a synonym of Scilla forbesii. I'd love some 
guidance about how we should handle this on the wiki and what to rename 
Arnold's picture. Is there any consensus from any of you who know more 
about these genera than I do? Thanks in advance for your help on this.

Mary Sue




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